1. Technical Field
The technical field relates to data transmission, and particularly to a method for transmitting a message between a first electronic device and a second electronic device belonging to an energy distribution network.
2. Description of the Related Art
An energy distribution network may employ a power line communication for the communication of data between the household meters and a district distribution box or concentrator. The data which can be transmitted are both representative of the energy consumption by a user (communication from meter to distribution box) and network control information (communication from distribution box to meter, and vice versa).
The power line communication represents, in all respects, a data transmission line and, as such, it is subjected to possible fraudulent attacks by malicious third parties who, by forcing the communication line, could alter and/or cancel the data being transmitted, causing irreparable drawbacks on the monitoring of the energy consumptions, and consequently on the relative invoicing by the operator of the energy distribution network or even causing false and unjustified alarms in the same network.
In order to reduce these drawbacks, the need is felt to implement a data transmission method with a suitable safety level in the power line communication as a data transmission line.
In one approach, a data transmission method of a known type is implemented in assigning a secret data communication key to the meters and the concentrator which are operatively connected to the power line communication.
However, this solution has the drawback that it is not very safe, since in the case where an attacker succeeds in accessing, for example, just one of the meters of the energy distribution network, he/she could gain knowledge of the secret data encryption key which is employed in the whole network, and this would be sufficient to compromise the safety of the power line communication and therefore of the data exchanged between the meters and the concentrator.